As in Hannah's earlier works, the relationships between men and women more often resemble hate than love, or perhaps the love and hate are so inextricably linked (especially within marriage) that they are indistinguishable.

For instance, of his third wife, to whom the novel is dedicated, Hannah writes, "I hate my wife, but she still keeps coming back." (His recollections of his first two marriages are far less happy than those of his third.) And as in much of Hannah's fiction, friendship between men offers spiritual possibilities that love, marriage, or sex with women do not. Boomerang mixes humor and horror, the comic and the tragic, the grotesque and the beautiful as freely as life itself does. Age and the past in general weigh heavily upon Hannah who comments "the old guys are me now."